Blog: Five things I'd like to see in iOS 5 and beyond

Five things I'd like to see in iOS 5 and beyond

Playing around with my Apple iPhone 4 for the last few weeks (having upgraded from an iPhone 3G), I've come up with a list of things I'd love to see in the next versions of iOS. Some of these I believe are coming with iOS 5, but some are things that if I were building a future version of iOS, I'd like to see included.

• Better push/text notifications - This is coming, I've read. Having the ability to see more than one notification on the locked screen is huge. I can't tell you the number of times I've missed a push notification because I thought there was just one and clicked through them. Even better would be a place to see the last (pick a number here) notifications your device received, in the order they were received.


• Camera from the locked screen - We went on vacation last month and I used the camera in my iPhone 4 as the main camera to document the trip. Having a button on the lock screen to activate the camera would be great. This is also something I've heard is in iOS5, so I'm happy about that.


• A keyboard button to paste your e-mail address - Most user names are your e-mail address, so why not be able to set your e-mail address to a button on the virtual keyboard. Maybe it would be like a special "paste" button or something that can be user set, if they didn't want to use their e-mail address, but the number of times I've had to type my e-mail address is amazing. To have a shortcut to do it would save a bunch of time.


• Widgets on the locked screen - This is sort of like the first item, but to be able to have a screen where I can tie the apps that are already running in the background anyway for instant update of information would be a great advancement.


• Location aware settings - My iOS device already knows where I am all the time, so a way to set up a group of settings specific to the location I am would be helpful. For instance, when I'm home, I usually use WiFi on my iPhone but when I'm not, I don't (the unlimited data plan I'm still on helps me do this). There are other setting that I change from time to time, depending on location, so this could be useful.